2/9 @ 8:00pm / Series: Jerry Beck's Animation Tuesdays Jerry Beck's Animation Tuesdays: Toonstruck - Cartoons In Love
In the cartoon world, marriage is not exclusively for one man and one woman. It can be between two mice, two wabbits, even a skunk and a pussy-cat! Animation historian Jerry Beck (Cartoon Brew.com) opens the film vault and presents a collection of love-obsessed cartoon classics starring all your favorites -- from the sex-starved Pepe LePew, to Tex Avery’s luscious Red Riding Hood. As usual, the program features rare 35mm and 16mm Technicolor film prints -- cartoons suitable for cartoon lovers of all ages! Bring a date, and don’t be late!
Watch the Warner Brothers cartoon "The Stupid Cupid"!
Tickets - $13
2/10 @ 8:00pm Blast Phemy! 1: A Midweek Music/Media Mashup Blast Phemy! 1 is a kaleidoscope of media/music collaborative potentials, from mid-century experimentations to spontaneous singularities. The program features: Amy Knoles, stretching the limits of expression with solo electronic percussion/interactive video virtuosity; J.Walt’s Spontaneous Fantasia, a solo digital animation performance blasting visuals and music into uncharted territories; F-Stop Serenade’s tapestry of hand-processed film and music featuring filmmaker/organist Mark “Cosmo” Segurson with Heather Lockie, Michael Uhler, James King, Noah Smith, Billy Louviere, and Pilar Diaz; and finally, works by experimental master James Whitney (1921-1981). Over the course of his career, James became increasingly involved in contemplative, spiritual interests -- Jungian psychology, alchemy, yoga, Tao, Krishnamurti and consciousness expansion -- which all became the subject matter of the films on which he labored for over 30 years. Tonight, we'll be screening new restored transfers of Yantra (1957) and Lapis (1966), which were supervised by the Whitney Estate and the Academy Film Archive, and feature scores by Gregg Johnson, a live volcano in virtuosic, percussive eruption.
2/14 @ 6:00pm Valentine's Day Matinee: Buster Keaton in "Seven Chances"
Join us for an early evening Valentine's Day treat -- the return of Buster Keaton's matrimony mix-up silent masterpiece Seven Chances! The film features the most magnificently ludicrous premise in all of Keaton-dom: Buster is a broke financial broker who finds out he stands to gain an inheritance of millions -- if he manages to marry before the day is out! After some wildly unsuccessful impromptu court-us interruptus, he rushes a personals ad in the paper -- and what follows is one of the most stunning signature Keaton chase sequences, with hundreds of would-be brides barreling down the streets of Los Angeles, zeroing in on Buster's bod. For those who purchase reserved couch seating for the screening, your ticket price includes complimentary champagne, strawberries and concession service at your seat!
Dir. Buster Keaton, 1925, 35mm, 56 min.
2/14 @ 10:00pm My Mondo Valentine (feat. Robby Benson in Ice Castles)
Anyone hoping to melt faces instead of hearts this Valentine’s day, take note -- you’ve found your mutant soulmate in the Cinefamily. Come watch us give love a bad name in another signature Cinefamily Mondo night, in which we plumb the depths of impossibly rare film and video vaults for the craziest love-themed clips on the planet. This mix features everything from misguided educational sex ed films to weirdly romantic TV ads, homemade atrocities to our favorite skeezy "how to score" films. The rapturous proceedings will then cap off with the classically saccharine '70s sports romance Ice Castles, starring a luscious and soft Robby Benson, and figure-skating champion Holly-Lynn Johnson as Alexis, a perfect little doll of an ice queen with a skullful of blood clots. Impress your date with a night like no other, or bring a raincoat and impress yourself. Ice Castles Dir. Donald Wyre, 1978, 35mm, 108 min.
Watch an excerpt from "Ice Castles"!
Tickets - $12
2/16 @ 8:00pm One Too Many Mornings (sneak preview!)
In a unique hybrid of fratboy-esque raunch and Cassavetes-style naturalism, One Too Many Mornings, fresh from its premiere at the 2010 Sundance fest, is a coming-of-age comedy about two dudes who are way too old to be coming of age. Fischer, a twentysomething layabout who lives for free in a Pacific Palisades church, is surprised to find estranged childhood friend Peter, who's run away from a longtime girlfriend, on his doorstep. As the boys drink, party and waste their days away, Fischer turns a blind eye to Peter's growing depression -- until Peter's girlfriend becomes the next to show up unexpectedly. Director Michael Mohan acutely explores the nuances of friendship and responsibility and keeps it charming, while the crisp B&W cinematography provides a smart counterpoint. The acting is great, the characters are real, and the story’s challenge asks you personally -- this is your life; what are you gonna do about it? Join us for a cast & crew Q&A after the screening! Dir. Michael Mohan, 2010, digital presentation, 90 min.
Watch the trailer for "One Too Many Mornings"!
Tickets - $12
2/21 @ 8:00pm Jesco Night: White Lightnin' shown with Dancing Outlaw
Not simply a legend in his West Virginia hometown, Jesco White is better known the world over as "The Dancing Outlaw", the outrageous hard-living and -loving entertainer who learned his brand of Appalachian hot steps from D. Ray White, his dear ol' pa and one of the most famous "mountain dancers" of the 20th century. We present a pairing of the brand-new Jesco biopic White Lightnin' with the doc that started it all, Dancing Outlaw.
First up is the swaggering, stylized White Lightnin', featuring a sensational turn by British actor Edward Hogg. "Jesco's drugs of choice are gasoline and lighter fluid, plus the high he gets from performing the wild mountain dancing steps taught to him by his daddy -- but it's reform school and a lunatic asylum that teach Jesco how to fight, and fight he does. Redneck exploitation is gorgeously reinvented as Jesco explodes from one burst of trailer trashing rage to the next, in this brutal and demented hillbilly saga." (Salt Co.)
After the break, we'll take a look at the real Jesco's madcap life with Dancing Outlaw. Made for West Virgina public TV, the film is "one of the most bizarre, upsetting, and ultimately...inspiring documentaries to have emerged from the South, or from anywhere, in recent memory. It becomes, in the telling, the story of a family and of Appalachian culture -- besieged by a poverty impossible to romanticize; a culture that persists only in shards: in the pronunciation of words, in debased folk music and dancing, in a tradition of clan feuding, and in the encouragement of a certain kind of eccentricity that is, let us say, extreme." (Oxford American Magazine) White Lightnin' Dir. Dominic Murphy, 2009, Blu-Ray, 92 min. Dancing Outlaw Dir. Jacob Young, 1991, digital presentation, 101 min.
Watch the trailer for "White Lightnin'"!
Tickets - $12
2/23 @ 8:00pm TV Tuesday: A Very Special Episode...
It's an all-too-familiar conceit: the commercial fades up, a somber piano line is struck, and in a low, lugubrious rumble the announcer says "On a very special episode of..." Many a TV sitcom has been hazily defined in our memories by its "very special episodes", the installments in which the monotony of its lameness is broken by a confusing left turn into cheap, sappy dramatics: one of the ensemble cast gains a drug addiction, has a brush with death, experiences violence that hits close to home, and so on. Most often, these episodes have only the power to make one wretch with their saccharine lip service to the "cause of the week" -- but then there are those rare occasions when, due to the intervention of the TV gods, things go off-the-cliff bat-shit crazy! Come see half a dozen of the finest examples of what happens when a "very special episode" gets waaaaaaaay too special, with death scenes, abrupt four-minute stretches played uncomfortably straight (with no laugh track), cast members getting backhanded across the room by drunken guest stars, prostitution, Fellini-esque surreal dream sequences and more!
Watch a "special episode" clip of exactly what we're talking about!
...and here's another!
Tickets - $12
2/28 @ 8:00pm Cartune Xprez: 2010 Future Television
The travelling roadshow of animated videos and multimedia performances known as Cartune Xprez comes to the Cinefamily for an orgy of hypercolored retina-roasting antics. This program of experimental cartoons and live video theater is shaped around a maximum diversity of animated forms, and, using popular media as touchstones for their perspectives, each artist guides us through an inverted fantasy of isolation in this weird digital world, making your synapses sizzle with their stratospheric levels of conceptual awesomeness. The night's works provide a rare opportunity to see videos by emerging artists, as well as those of internationally-known creators whose collective resume includes the Whitney Biennial, MOMA, and Sundance. Topping off the evening's screenings is a live performance by Hooliganship, the "cell phone grunge group" (weloveyouso.com) that blends animation and electo-rock sounds into an elaborate pulsating poke to the cerebellum -- and did we mention costume changes?!
Watch Taras Hrabowsky's "Thing Pit"!
Tickets - $12
3/2 @ 8:00pm / Series: Jerry Beck's Animation Tuesdays Scope-A-Toons
For ladies who want it wider and guys who like it longer, this month our resident animation historian Jerry Beck will screen a collection of classic cartoons from the 1950s which were made in various anamorphic widescreen formats. The majority of these cartoons have not been projected in their original screen ratios since their first release –- and will include Disney’s Oscar-winning Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom and Terrytoons’ classic Juggler of Our Lady (narrated by Boris Karloff, designed by R.O. Blechman.) Rarely seen on the big screen, Jerry will expand your animated horizons in CinemaScope, MetroScope, TotalVision and SuperPanaoramaUltraScope! A once in a lifetime presentation -- Mr. Magoo, Tom & Jerry, Donald Duck, will never look the same!
Watch the Donald Duck cartoon "Grand Canyonscope"!
Tickets - $13
3/7 @ 8:00pm Cinefamily Awards-Watching Party + Fundraiser!
The annual onslaught of film awards telecasts is like a multi-car pileup on the 405 -- impossible to ignore, and teeming with celebrity carnage. And, of course, the biggest awards show of them all, the Super Bowl of moviedom, can be a blast in spite of its girth, given the right social setting. So why watch the thing streaming on your desktop all by your lonesome, or in some seedy dive where the local reprobates are yammering over the sound of those bizarre musical numbers, when you can catch the whole shebang live at the Cinefamily, on the big screen -- and support your favorite non-profit cinematheque at the same time? Gossip with us about the gaudy fashions -- share in our outrage when we just can't believe how that film won - and join in our collective hearts being warmed by the underdog sweeping the whole thing when no one expected it. As well, start the evening off with us as we watch the irreverent Charlie Kaufman-esque docudrama TVTV Looks At The Oscars, starring Lily Tomlin in a dual role as a fictional hausfrau who catches the awards from her midwestern home, and as herself, nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Robert Altman's Nashville.
3/10 @ 8:00pm Blast Phemy! 2: Text Of Light (feat. Lee Ranaldo) & Parallel
Join Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo, collaborating live with saxophonist Ulrich Krieger and guitarist Alan Licht, as he goes to the blasphemous extreme with live scores to the films of Stan Brakhage and other mid-century American cinema avant-gardists. According to Licht, Text of Light "does not perform soundtracks to the films of Stan Brakhage. Rather, it uses the films as a further element for improvisation, almost as [another] performer. While Brakhage intended for these films to be screened silently as films...[here] they are juxtaposed with the music, in a kind of real-time performance, mixed-media collage." But the evening doesn't stop there! The night also includes a screening of Parallel, an animation tour-de-force by mediamaker Huckleberry Lain, featuring music by Argentinean-born, L.A.-based electronic duo Languis.
Watch a Text Of Light performance w/ Lee Ranaldo and Alan Licht from 2008!
3/14 @ 8pm / Series: Comedy Death-Ray Michael Cera presents
Freebie And The Bean
For March's CDR night, we welcome one of the most instantly recognizable (and instantly funny) actors of his generation: Michael Cera, whose turns in Superbad, Juno and Youth In Revolt have bumped John Cusack out of the top slot of nerd girl crushes everywhere. His film pick for the evening is a left-field choice from someone so sweet: the mayhem-packed, filthy-mouthed comedy Freebie and The Bean. Michael says: "Filled with car crash sequences, guns, yelling, transvestites and Alan Arkin, Freebie and the Bean has got to be the best buddy-cop film of 1974." It's a veritable "who's who" of '70s film awesomeness, starring James Caan and Alan Arkin, directed by Richard Rush (The Stunt Man, Getting Straight), co-written by Floyd Mutrux (Dusty And Sweets McGee) and shot by Laszlo Kovacs (Easy Rider)! Caan and Arkin are a pair of racist, homophobic and misogynist San Francisco supercops who think nothing of plowing cars into pedestrians, plugging suspects full of lead in toilet stalls and demolishing half the city's free-standing structures in order to nab the bad guy, in this gleefully anarchic ode to kicking ass first, and takin' names later.
Dir. Richard Rush, 1974, 35mm, 113 min.
Watch the trailer for "Freebie And The Bean"!
Tickets - $14
3/21 @ 8:00pm Small Change (Brand-new 35mm print!)
One of Francois Truffaut's most endearing labors of love, Small Change is one of those rare films that strikes dead the cynicism in any hardened heart. Filmed entirely in Thiers, a small town in the French countryside, the film presents an interconnected series of vignettes featuring one of the most vibrant child casts ever gathered, as the kids (ages 0 to 14) go to school, horse around, go to the movies, fall out of windows, care for (and rebel against) their parents and explore each other; as Truffaut himself said, "Our idea really is 'From the first bottle to the first kiss.'" The film's schoolbound world is the antithesis of the dour oppressiveness Truffaut paints in The 400 Blows, and the joyousness of the proceedings clearly wore off on the director, for Small Change is as innocent, buzzing and wide-eyed as childhood itself. We're thrilled to present Small Change in a gorgeous, newly-struck 35mm print! Dir. Francois Truffaut, 1976, 35mm, 104 min.
Watch the trailer for "Small Change"!
Tickets - $12
3/23 @ 8:00pm Harmony & Me
"The most creative works of art often come from heartache. In a way, that’s all we can hope for and from Harmony, a sullen young lyricist, as he pines for a woman who broke his heart with seemingly little remorse. Harmony finds solace in song, yet fails to find compassion from those around him: pathetic friends who drive minivans convince him that love is a vaguely pedophilic letdown, and self-serving coworkers show him that life is generally sadistic. Meanwhile, chewy frozen chocolate serves as a reminder that at times everything can be too grievous to handle. Austin-based filmmaker Bob Byington’s homegrown style transcends the piece's budgetary limitations, and his scripted esprit results in colorful, chaotic characters brought to life by Justin Rice, Kevin Corrigan, Pat Healy, and Kristen Tucker. These characters don’t merely mimic reality; they heighten the hilarity of a traumatic post-breakup, which in truth is probably just about as ridiculous in life as it is onscreen." (CineVegas) Director Bob Byington will appear live for a post-screening Q&A! Dir. Bob Byington, 2009, HDCAM, 75 min.
Watch the trailer for "Harmony & Me"!
Tickets - $12
3/28 @ 8:00pm Like A Phoenix From The Ashes: "Pomegranates" Record Release Party
Join us as we inaugurate the release of "Pomegranates", a compilation of Persian folk, funk, and psychedelia on the Finders Keepers record label, in a night also celebrating Norooz (the Persian New Year!) This spring-equinox-special will boast a psychedelic visual feast of ultra-rare and never-before-screened vintage film and video clips from '60s/'70s Iran, collaged and curated by Cinefamily's Tom Fitzgerald, and soundtracked with a Middle Eastern mash-up mix done by Finders Keepers founder Andy Votel. A fun celebration of drinks, catered Persian dinner and pastries, and artwork along with special guest B-Music DJs will preview and follow the film presentation!
5/15 @ 10:30pm Jack Stevenson presents Movies With Roots In Hell: The Effects Of Drugs On American Cinema
Film collector and author Jack Stevenson ("Fleshpot", "Land of a Thousand Balconies: Discoveries and Confessions of a B-Movie Archaeologist") has presented programs of rare and cool vintage films throughout Europe and in America, at venues as diverse as the Warhol Museum in Pittsburg, the Yerba Buena in SF and at his cinema in Copenhagen, Denmark -- and we're thrilled to have him back at The Cinefamily for another round of picks from his personal archive of 16mm and 35mm prints, in a visit that coincides with the publication of his brand-new tome "Scandinavian Blue: The Erotic Cinema of Sweden and Denmark in the 1960s and 1970s!"
Experience sixty hair-raising years of sin and sensation in this substance-fueled retrospective, with clips spanning from the stoned Seventies all the way back to the totaled Teens! From the giddy silent-era cocaine slapstick of Mystery of the Leaping Fish to the ultra-bizarre early-'30s song performance Sweet Marijuana, from the preachy mid-50's invective of The Pusher to the psychedelic excess of the 1968 NYC scene report Rockflow and the '70s drug paranoia classics The People Next Door and Blue Sunshine, "Movies With Roots in Hell" samples every era via a selection of shorts, trailers and outtakes, all curated by legendary film archivist Jack Stevenson. Come see how preachers, educators, entertainers, fear-mongers and hippies used drugs to entertain, titillate, scare and celebrate the experience of mind alteration.
Tickets - $12
5/16 @ 8:00pm Jack Stevenson presents: Venom
Part of the tradition of Danish sex films that helped break down the barriers of censorship, Venom (aka Gift) is the lurid story of Per, a pompous young man who preaches the gospel of the flesh to his new girlfriend and her stuffy upper-class family. Having seduced the girl into taking part in his porny home movies, Per, in a haze of hash smoke and amoral philosophical rants, aims to provoke her bourgeois parents by showing them the smut and shaming them into oblivion. Originally intended as a a heated polemic against pornography and the looming wave of society's unbridled hedonism, Venom ironically helped pave the way for precisely the excesses it preached against -- and in an ultra-rare Los Angeles 35mm screening, now you can see the film that originally sent Danish authorities into apoplexy, and led to the abolishment of its country's film censorship in 1969. Largely forgotten today, Venom is an overlooked treasure from a moment in time when Denmark transformed from a isolated backwater into the most liberal society on the face of the earth. Film curator Jack Stevenson will also present a selection of sexy Scandinavian shorts before the feature! Dir. Knud Leif Thomsen, 1966, 35mm, 96 min.
Jerry Beck's Animation Tuesdays:
Blast Phemy! 1:
Valentine's Day Matinee:
My Mondo Valentine
One Too Many Mornings
Jesco Night:
TV Tuesday:
Cartune Xprez:
Scope-A-Toons
Cinefamily Awards-Watching Party + Fundraiser!
Blast Phemy! 2:
Michael Cera presents
Small Change
Harmony & Me
Like A Phoenix From The Ashes:
Jack Stevenson presents
Jack Stevenson presents:
